How Books Will Become Machines / quote 16 of 21
The intrinsic conservatism of the encyclopedia paradigm
In evolutionary terms, in a closed and protected volume the Book offered room for constant innovation. Each printed book could be an isolated island. [...] As a standalone autonomous object, a book could take parts in an infinite number of publishing experiments. [..] It is difficult to imagine how such evolution could continue if books just became standardized articulated data part of a worldwide machine. The encyclopedia core principle is the regulation and standardization of knowledge nodes. Innovation is limited to local contents [..] We do not realize yet the intrinsic conservatism of the encyclo- pedia paradigm because we are fascinated by the spectacle of the global information harvest. We see the human society becoming explicit and look at this crystallization process with fascination. [..] How can such a paradigm shifting evolution be a factor of cultural immobili- ty? As long as the encyclopedia is growing, its cultural standardiza- tion effects will be partially masked. But what will happen, when all the books, all the concepts, all the places, all the readers will be mapped into standardized templates? Will cultural innovation still be possible within such a framework?